


The Dark Lord Proprietor

by RunawayMarbles



Series: Not Cover Art [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supervillains, Amnesia sort of, Britains next top supervillain, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, F/M, Humor, Light Pining, M/M, Started out as a Dr. Horrible AU but it isn't anymore, moderate angst, update it's more moderate to heavy pining now, varying levels of sexual tension, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-05 20:59:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles
Summary: A year ago, James Flint was in a stable relationship and was within spitting distance of taking over London. Now he's single, with a dubiously loyal henchman, a lairmate determined to learn his every weakness, and a Secret Past with the new supervillain on the scene.And thanks to a new government program, it's all a race to the bottom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Only about 10% the Dr. Horrible AU this started out as-- 110% the fault of lacecat. I don't even know, guys. I don't know.

The ideal villain lair would be either under a pub (to cover odd noises) or under a bookshop (in case Flint ran out of reading material.) This lair is under neither of those—above them are neighbors, and below them are more neighbors, because they aren’t underground at all.

Still, it’s fine. It’s respectable, even. They have a sitting room in case someone stops by, and two obvious bedroom doors, because they are just mates sharing a flat living ordinary, boring lives.

Except, the neighbors don’t come by, the sitting room is a wreck, Flint’s bedroom is a wreck, and he can’t sleep. He'd finished the latest modifications to the ray gun last week, but there’s still time to think of more before—

The phone rings. 

Flint rolls over and watches it buzz across his nightstand like a sad, directionless wasp.

It could be an emergency. It could be Miranda. It could also be that robot girl from the resort he’s never stayed at, trying to lure him into some financial pit.  

Sighing, he flips it over.

_William Mandery._

He closes his eyes again. It had been Hal who had said that he needed a henchman, and who had suggested his old protegee. Flint had argued— (“I don’t need another henchman—”)

And Silver had countered— “ _Another?_ I’m _not_ your henchman, in fact, you're _my_ henchman—"

And Flint had raised some very valid concerns— “Long John Silver and Billy Bones? This is a lair, not a strip club—"

To which Silver had responded, “Why not both? Billy, take off your shirt—”

And Billy had responded, “No!!” and then “is this a test? Because even if it is I’m not taking off my shit.”

He’s been a perfectly good henchman so far, though. And Flint should answer his phone.

“Yup.”

 _“Captain.”_ Billy sounds oddly breathless, for half past one in the morning. _“Are you watching the news?”_

“I am… asleep.”

_“The Dark Lord Proprietor is trying to take down the courthouse.”_

Flint is… not asleep. He sits up and reaches for his gun. One of his guns. “Which courthouse?”

Two minutes to get into the outfit, one minute to get his basic weapons: grappling hook, handgun, second handgun, knife, slightly bigger knife, slightly smaller knife, switchblade, lighter, gasoline flask,  and his less basic weapons—(the ray gun.)

He hasn’t used it _since_ , but it’s still near the front of his armor closet. Constantly updated, constantly ready, because he’s got it this time. This time.

He’s going to bring Thomas home.

But to do that, he has to get past his flatmate.

Lair-mate.

Whatever.

“Fuck’re you going?” Silver actually _was_ watching telly. He’s also got the plates of his knee opened up and is tinkering with something inside.

“Out,” Flint says.

And Silver doesn’t have the time or reason to stop him, so he doesn’t, so Flint jumps out the back window and into the alley. The landing jars his knees, but he’s not going to think on it, because to do so would be to consider the fact that he’s getting old. And he’s not.

So he runs.

He runs to his motorcycle, anyway, and that he drives down to the courthouse Billy had specified. Why that courthouse, what Thomas is doing there, he doesn’t know—doesn’t need to know. He pulls his mask down over his face, and drives.

(And almost crashes twice. It’s a learning process.)

(He used to have a jet.)

Turns out, though, that he should have asked for specifics: specifically, why that courthouse and what Thomas is doing there. Because while Flint might be wrong—he has been wrong at least once in his life, though certainly no more than three times—it _looks_ like Thomas is standing on the roof while an entire army of robotic ants climbs up the sides and chews away at the mortar.

There’s a spotlight on him.

Well, he always was good at getting noticed.

This has definite pros and cons: on the one hand, Flint would very much like to avoid Thomas getting arrested. But he also needs the light to get a clear shot.

Shit.

There’s a building about the same height as the bank across the street. It’ll have to do.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing is, Thomas has always drawn attention. Always been impressive—nay, _magnificent_. Flint had once seen him reduce an Arsenal fan to tears with a ten-point argument on why his favorite midfielder should be fired. Sidelines or dinner table, he always had a way of talking someone around to his position.

Not like Silver, who sneaks up behind people and takes their hands, pulling them to an answer they feel like they’ve found on their own. You always _knew_ what Thomas was doing, but god it was amazing to watch it work.

It turns out that same trait works as well now that he’s calling himself the Dark Lord Proprietor (and it’s _funny,_ the name—over the top and tongue-in-cheek and critical of the British monarchy all at once) and is standing on a building that’s being destroyed by robot ants.

(Where did he even get those?)

Flint lines up the shot.

(It’ll work.)

(It’ll work, right?)

(He’s been tinkering with this almost every day since it happened. Finding the problem. Fixing the problem. And maybe if he waits until next month it’ll be fixed even better, but this is the first time he’s had Thomas in his sights in three months, and if he doesn’t shoot now—)

The building is collapsing.

(The building.)

(Is—)

(If he doesn’t _shoot now_ —)

(The helicopter is getting lower--)

Flint fires.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s not entirely clear whether Eleanor’s grappling hooks obey the laws of physics, but Flint isn’t going to think about it too hard. He’s got an arm around Thomas and a foot on the ground and the building’s roof is falling in but Thomas isn’t on it so this is a win.

(And just for a second he—) “Were you planning on getting _off_ the building before it fell in?” he demands.

And Thomas punches him. “Who the _fuck_ are you and what do you want?”

(—and then he.) “It’s James.” The words, his face, they’re all caught up in his mask but if he takes it off he risks himself, he risks Silver. And Billy, he supposes, but he’s not as worried about Billy.

He can still see Thomas under the dark hood. “James… Peterson?”

“Who the fuck is—”

Thomas punches him again, and Flint hits the ground shoulder-first. And he’s going to get up and fight Thomas back, he is. This is not how he wants to die, or get arrested, because law enforcement and superheroes are definitely coming for them. He’s going to get up in just a second when the love of his life has finished kicking the living shit out of—

“Back away from him.” It’s a cold voice that cuts through the alley. “Very. Slowly.”

Thomas hesitates.

A small rocket bounces off the wall and starts to spark.

Thomas flees.

James sits up, bricks cold under his hand, shoulder throbbing—only to get kicked again in the side.

“What,” Silver says. “The fuck. What the actual fuck. What the actual, living, breathing nightmare of a fuck—” even as he’s saying that he’s kicking Flint _again_. Not with his prosthetic leg, though, so not as hard as he could have. And he’s hauling Flint up by the injured shoulder. “Honestly, what the fuck.” Then—“Billy, I found him. Can you distract the—no, the cops, not the supersquad— fucking _Rogers_ , okay, we’re turning.” Then—“Seriously, what the fuck was that?”

It was painful, is what it was. “I’m sorry,” Flint says. “Are you talking to _me_ now?” They stagger down the alley, a pair of drunk mates on a Tuesday night except they’re wearing masks and armed and oh, he seems to be covered in blood. That’s nice.

_(James… Peterson?)_

(Who the fuck even is James Peterson?)

“ _Yes_ I’m talking to you.”

“Well, then that was a fight. You’ve seen one before, I’m sure— _ow._ Fuck are we doing?”

“We’re going home.”

Flint stops. “We can’t go home. I need to get the ray gun, I left it on top of the…” he waves his hand behind him. “The office building back there.”

“Yeah. No. Fucking Woodes Rogers has set up base up there.”

No. “I need to go back for—”

“It’s gone, Flint,” Silver says sharply. Flint smacks him, and they both look around. But for all the commotion going on behind them, these streets are quiet. “It’s gone.”

His stomach clenches.

It had been almost perfect.

(Had it?)

Without it he won’t, Thomas will never, and if he thinks about this too hard he’s going to have a panic attack and he’s in the middle of the street being dragged along by Silver and he cannot have that right now. One step. Two steps. Three steps. He should have taken the shot—

But he’ll take a living Thomas who doesn’t know him over a dead one.

_Fuck._

“The motorbike—”

“Billy’s got it.”

“You let Billy drive my—”

“Okay, one,” Silver says, “It’s _ours,_ I pay half the insurance. Two, you don’t get to talk unless it’s a lengthy explanation, so shut up.”

“How am I supposed to—”

Silver kicks him.

Again.

 

* * *

 

 

Twenty minutes of angry walking later finds Flint on the sofa, shirt off, with Silver jabbing at a cut none-too-gently with iodine.

“Shittittyfuck.”

He is ignored. “To recap, for those just tuning in,” Silver says. “You went out, presumably to fight the Dark Lord Proprietor, which you did, badly, after saving him from a collapsing building and losing your special ray gun.”

“I didn’t lose it. You just wouldn’t let me go back for it. Fuck!”

Silver caps the bottle, looking smug. “Look. Either you tell me what you’re up to and I either help you or talk you out of it, or you don’t tell me and I do nothing but hinder and snoop and pester until we’re both miserable. It’s your choice.”

That’s a reasonable argument.

(And it would be nice, someone else carrying this, even a little—Miranda’s still in the Caiman islands and he—)

(He—)

“He’s my husband.”

Silver takes a step back, surveying him. “What.”

“The Dark Lord Proprietor. He’s my husband.”

“Hold that thought.” Silver raises a hand and then turns, marching towards the cabinet. It’s only now that Flint realizes Silver’s limping. He doesn’t stumble, though: Flint has seen him on bad days enough to know that. Even on a crutch he walks like a king.

(Thomas wouldn’t like that kind of talk. _Kings are dead,_ he’d told James once.)

( _I can name a few who would disagree,_ James had responded. _And a current Prince of Wales._ )

“What happened to your leg?”

“The rocket launcher delivery system isn’t working quite how I want it to yet.” Silver’s got a bottle and two glasses in his hand when he turns. They’re plopped unceremoniously on the coffee table. “Okay. The Dark Lord Proprietor is your husband. Holy shit, does he know who you are? Does he know who _I_ am?”

Flint says, “he doesn’t know who I am.” He never had a taste for alcohol—he likes it, sure, but he’s never been able to tell _the good stuff_ from _the cheap stuff._ So he can say with great confidence that what Silver has picked is a) tasty and b) going to get him drunk.

It’s all he needs to know, he supposes.

“He doesn’t know who I am. Because about eight months ago,” seven months two weeks five days but who the fuck is counting, “there was an accident with the ray gun. We—were partners.”

“Clearly.” Silver is watching him, so Flint has to look somewhere else. They need to redecorate the lair. It’s all thrift store art and whiteboards.

“No, we were—he’d do the political maneuvering, he’d figure out who was taking bribes and who was buying far-right political ads, and then I’d rob them or destroy some buildings or what have you. And the ray gun was supposed to stun. He’d designed it, and he wanted to be on sight to monitor the vitals—I hit someone he rushes to see if they’re okay, takes the data. You know.” Silver waves at him to go on.   “But there were. There was.” The intervention of some security guards, one of whom moonlit as a superhero.

“The ray gun hit him,” Silver guesses. It’s a nicer way to phrase it than _you shot him._

“Yeah.” And he hadn’t been able to run to Thomas, hadn’t been able to help him, and when he’d tried to find him in the hospital, the nurse had said, _he’s never heard of you, can I please see some ID?_

“I thought he just, you know. Didn’t want to see me after. Which would have been fair. But I hacked his medical records—”

“You hacked—”

Flint huffs. “I paid Max. Whatever. And the last year or so was just… gone, from his memory.” he waves a hand. “I tried to find him, but he—his parents’ house has really good security. And then he became a supervillain.”

“Yeah how did that work—wait, you’re married and you’d known him less than a year?”

Frown. “We’re very decisive people.”

Leaning back on the sofa, Silver shakes his head, and then swooshes his drink. “Clearly,” he says again. “So the ray gun was supposed to restore his memory?”

Flint nods. Once. Sharp. He can’t think about that loss right now—he loses, it’s happened before, far more than three times. He just has to move to the next thing. He has to—

“Have you tried like. Stop me if I’m crazy here. Going up to him, as you and not as Captain Flint, and talking to him? True love’s kiss, et cetera et cetera?”

“When the hell would I see him? What the hell would I say? You can’t just go around kissing strangers—”

“So you have thought about it,” Silver says. “Right. We'd need an entry strategy, an exit strategy, and a boning strategy." He gets up and begins to make notes on a whiteboard, under the title 'Operation XOXO.' 

Flint sighs. "Can we call it something else?" 

 

* * *

 

John Silver wakes up to a world where James Flint is married.

It’s the same world he’d been living in before, unawares: a layer of his flatmate that reveals so much, and yet. And _yet._

He tries it out. The sun is rising, the government is a wreck, and—

Captain Flint is married (!) to a man (!!) who is the Dark Lord Proprietor (!!!) who has forgotten about this marriage due to a tragic accident (!!!!).

(!!!!!!!).

Silver has heard his share of tragic backstories. He’s invented a few of his own. But this is—well, he wouldn’t say that Flint wouldn’t lie, because he would and has, and he wouldn’t say he wouldn’t lie to Silver because he would and has done that as well. It’s par for the course, when one is a subletting from a villain. But he can’t think of a reason why Flint would lie about something like that. It’s too… convoluted. Dramatic. Bad sci-fi, except Flint’s husband had taken down a building with robot ants, so perhaps Silver should give everyone a pass in that regard.

(James Flint’s husband.)

Except he’s sure that James Flint isn’t the name on the marriage license, or the name the DLP called him, back when he knew what to call him. Sliver wonders if his first name is even _James._

He hopes it is.

In the meantime, the rocket launcher in his knee isn’t going to re-calibrate itself. He picks up a screwdriver and turns on the TV, trying to get the ideal balance of background noise—

 _“—Initiative,”_ Woodes Fucking Rogers is saying. _“We are prepared to offer immunity to a certain number of people—pardons, if you will—in exchange for their cooperation and use of their… unique talents for the good of the city and country.”_ The scar on his face is covered in makeup, and you can’t see his stupid ponytail, but he still looks like a douchebag.

 _“Any names currently on the list?”_ the reporter asks.

_“Yes, actually. In exchange for immunity I was able to get a lot of help from the Queen of Thieves—her outreach to her networks has been invaluable, and despite her past actions she deserves true commendation for her work here. She’s helped us come up with a list of good candidates—independently vetted, of course.”_

“FLINT!” Silver bellows, hand on his phone. He has Max on speed-dial, but it goes straight to voicemail. He rings again. “FLINT!”

“Jesus on a cake, what?” Flint lurches into the living room like a zombie that has just discovered limbs. There’s a pillow crease on his face, his hair is sticking out at weird angles, and there are shadows under his eyes. He’s not going to strike fear anywhere right now, but he’s not going to woo his husband back either.  

“Your work wife is selling out to Woodes Rogers,” Silver says.

“The fuck?”

Flint flings himself down on the sofa next to him, turning up the volume.

Silver’s phone rings. Max.

He plugs one ear and answers. “Did you know she was going to do this?”

 _“No.”_ The word is doubled, coming from both Flint and Max.

“How many pardons are they offering?”  he directs this to Max. 

_“I don’t know.”_

“Are you on the list?”

_“Yes.”_

Of course she is. Eleanor will have told Rogers how valuable Max is. But Silver isn’t going to believe that there’s a single thing Max _doesn’t_ know about him, at this point—about all of them—and if she decides to turn them in they’re all going to be absolutely fucked.

But she won’t. She wouldn’t. Not out of personal loyalty, but because Max knows that to trash her reputation for confidentiality and honesty would be to lose anything she could get from them in the future.

Of course, if Silver and Flint are on the list, they won’t have to worry about that.

“Am I on the list? Is Flint?”

_“I don’t know.”_

“Jack and Anne? Vane?” he looks at Flint. “The Proprietor?”

 _“I don’t_ know. _I’m finding out. Just hold tight. And John—”_

She’s never called him John before. Silver waits.

_“—I’ll let you know when I hear.”_

That’s not what she was going to say. He digs his fingers into the cracks in his leg plates, but she just hangs up.

“Max is finding out who’s on the list. What the criteria is.”

“She is, I presume.” Flint hasn’t taken his eyes off the TV, even as they went to commercial. “It’s not going to be about who is the most reformed or the least evil. It’s going to be about who Rogers can use, how willing they are to follow him.”

It’s hard not to laugh. “You think Max and Eleanor are going to let themselves be used?”

Flint smiles a little, too. His smiles tend to be more unsettling than anything else, but Silver wants them, wants all of them. Figuring out what makes Flint tick has been a fascinating puzzle, and while last night answered some of it, it just means new questions, new lines of inquiry Silver has never even considered. “No, I don’t. But I don’t think Rogers will realize that until it’s too late.”

They watch an ad for zit cream in semi-friendly silence. The idea of just—of having his crimes forgiven is tempting, but Silver can’t help but wonder what comes after that. What a one-legged man does when he isn’t allowed to shoot rockets out of his prosthetic. When he can’t let them underestimate him and then take them down with a well-placed steel-footed whack. When he isn’t bound to Flint and Billy out of necessity, but instead when they’ll have the option to leave him.

He isn’t good at being a civilian, or at being alone.  

“This might solve your problem, then,” he says anyway, because if Flint is going to go after the DLP then Silver is going to tie himself to him—to his story—and hang on for dear life. “If you and your Lord can both get pardons, you can meet him with the mask off. Then maybe he’ll remember.”

“Maybe.” The news has moved on to something something immigration something interview a racist, and Flint mutes it. “This was his plan, you know. He was working on it with Peter Ashe, who must have given it to Rogers.”

That’s. That’s… “He was in parliament?” Is he _still_ in parliament? Silver is pretty sure you’re not allowed to destroy buildings if you are.

“No. He and Ashe grew up together.”

Silver shrugs, and picks up his screwdriver again. “Regardless of who’s plan it was,” he says. “Maybe this will solve all your problems.”

“Yeah.” Flint looks at him, and then out the window, where the grey skies continue to be grey. “Maybe.”

 

* * *

 

 

“It’ll just create more problems,” Rackham says. He looks like he’s well on his way to drinking himself out of his own pub, and Silver wonders if Rackham, too, doesn’t know who he is outside villainy. “Pitting us against each other. Making us compete for his scraps.”

“I don’t trust him,” Anne adds, unnecessarily. She angles her head away from the rest of the bar, so only her mouth is visible under the brim of her hat. Anne Bonny is the only person Silver knows who can pull off a brim hat. “Who’s to say he doesn’t just track us down, arrest us when our backs is turned?”

“You want the pardons, though,” Silver guesses. “This is the perfect time for you two to just disappear.”

Anne’s hand is halfway to her stew, but it goes to the knife instead. “What do you mean?”

Please. “The Lima bank?” He lowers his voice, but he doesn’t really need to: the pub is loud, and anyone who overhears knows better. “That was you two, right?”

“Could be. What’s it to you?”

Silver raises his hands. “Nothing. Just figure a congratulations is in order. You take the immunity, you hide the money in offshore accounts, you’re set for life.”

“Yeah.” Anne doesn’t look as thrilled with her current riches as Silver would if _he_ had robbed the Lima bank. Which he and Flint had been planning to do, in fact. Before Jack and Anne beat him to the punch.

“But no one knows… who it was.” Jack’s sideburns twitch. “If I’m going out, I want a last stand. I want something someone will tell stories about. Retiring rich is all find and good but it’s not as satisfying when they don’t know you’re doing it.”

“You’d be alive and free, though. Isn’t that the best ‘fuck you’?” Silver takes another drink. They’ve broken out the good stuff for the occasion. They should have existential threats all the time, if the drinks are this good. “I’m sure Max could get you immunity.”

“Thus ends the story of Jack Rackham.” Jack pokes a little more at his food. “Bailed out of trouble by his girlfriend’s girlfriend.”

Anne’s fork makes an abrupt flight change, and Jack just barely yanks his hand back in time.

Huh.

“ _You_ should be fine, though.” Anne looks up from under her hat in the way she does when she’s looking to get a rise. “You'n Flint haven’t done anything big in ages.”

Fucking—Silver opens his mouth, considers, and then closes it again. She’s picked this trick up from Max, and he’s not going to fall for it.

(Also, he and Flint haven’t done anything big in ages.)

“I think Flint was going to fight the DLP last night,” he says, because that’s probably common knowledge at this point.

“Yeah, he ended up saving his ass instead. Good job there.” Jack raises his glass. “Although, DLP’s going to save most of _our_ asses. As long as he’s got an army of ants the rest of us are going to look great for immunity.” 

“Yeah,” Silver says. Then—“Shit.”

 

* * *

 

 

 _Third-rate villain “Captain Flint,” whose most serious crime in the last two months has been failing to signal a turn, appeared to actually_ rescue _the Dark Lord Proprietor last night before being rescued himself by  his henchman Long John Silver…_

“The case is closed,” Flint says, as Silver opens the door. “You’re _my_ henchman.”

“Is that the _Sun_ article where they call you a third-rate villain who can’t get it up?” Silver asks. “I’m not sure we should take their word as gospel. If you keep reading, they’ll see that they also refer to Anne Bonny as a femme fatale.”

“Well.” Flint frowns at the article in question. “She’s certainly fatal.”

“But she’s not _femme_ about it. Speaking of, did you know she was sleeping with Max?”

Did he? More importantly, did he care? “I don’t think so.”

“Well.” Silver drops down in the chair across the table and helps himself to some of Flint’s crackers. “It’s a thing.”

“How’s Rackham?”

“Worried about his legacy, again. Does that man have a terminal illness that we don’t know about?”

“Mm.” The article is wildly speculating about who could qualify for Rogers’s pardons—some have even floated Suicide Squad parallels about some government force. Yikes. “Well, villainy doesn’t have a long life expectancy.”

“I suppose not.” Silver takes a deep breath, and then whatever he’s about to say is cut off by Billy doing a somersault through their window.

He’s wearing a hoodie over his skeleton costume, but it doesn’t do anything for the legs. He hits the couch on the way down and ends up on his back on the floor, limbs akimbo, swearing like a sailor having a swearing contest with Malcom Tucker.

Unable to muster up an emotional reaction to this turn of events, Flint waits. Instead of his disgrace of a minion, he watches Silver studiously chewing the inside of his mouth in an attempt not to laugh.

“You know,” he says. “The last time I entered a residence like that, my girlfriend drop-kicked me to Wales.”

Billy stops swearing. “Wow, really?”

“No. I landed on the street. This was when I had two legs.” Silver frowns. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Well,” Billy unfolds his limbs as he rises, looking a bit like that growing Christmas tree from the _Nutcracker_. Except with bones. “I had to return the bike keys. And one of Max’s girls wanted me to give you this.” He rummages around in the ribs of his costume before pulling out a memory stick.   

Flint leans back on instinct, then reconsiders, and grabs a pair of tongs. “I’ll go x-ray that, thanks.”

Their x-ray machine is no longer in the kitchen. After Billy cited something called ‘safety concerns’, it’d been banished to Silver’s walk-in closet. Which means he has to go through Silver’s room.

It’s always a bit of a minefield. Silver likes to collect stuff—not anything important, as far as Flint can see, just… _stuff._ Extra clothes are in heaps around the room, stacks of garage sale books that he’s probably never going to read, cheap shiny jewelry and expensive shiny jewelry he stole from somewhere or another. It’s always reminded Flint of a magpie nest, but he’s careful as he picks his way through it—he doesn’t want to upset whatever balance has been struck here.

The x-ray machine is almost completely obscured by clothes—some of which wouldn’t even _fit_ Silver—and it’s hard to resist the urge to fold them and put them away. Instead, he lays them gently on the floor. Not neat enough to look like he’d made any effort, but better than shoving them into a heap, even if that’s what they’d already been.

According to the machine, there aren’t any obvious explosives in the memory stick. Their stash of throw-away, off-network laptops is under Silver’s jewelry collection, and Flint grabs one on the way out.

There are voices on the other side of the door, though, and he hesitates.

“...weird,” Billy is saying. He’s trying to keep his voice down but he’s always been bad at that. “Ever since the DLP thing.”

“Well, he got his ass kicked,” Silver says. “Bound to make anyone feel bad. Don’t worry about it.”

He waits another second, but Silver fails to divulge all his secrets, so Flint opens the door.

“This laptop alright?” he holds up the netbook.

“Yeah, fine.” Silver makes grabby hands for it, and so Flint passes it and the drive over. Billy gets some duct tape for the webcam, and then they all huddle around the screen.

(Loading… loading…)

(Maybe Flint should have looked at this alone, maybe it’s going to call the police to their location or something—)

An install option pops up. Silver shrugs and then accepts, and they wait another couple minutes before a window opens. Lists of names and crimes and numbers rolling together into—

Holy shit.

(Holy. Shit.)

“It’s the immunity calculations,” Silver realizes, scrolling down. Lists of names in red, orange or green—he right clicks to reorder, and a list of names appear in green at the top next to a point value. Orange names are listed below them, and red names at the bottom. 

 _Queen of Thieves (Eleanor Guthrie_ ) is in green. So is _Max (Jane Bloggs),_ _Calico Jack (John Bloggs),_ and _Anne Bonny (Anne Bonny.)_

Silver clicks on their point values, scanning the list. “They must not have picked up the bank job. Jack, you smooth motherfucker.”

“Or Max kept it off the list. Scroll down.”

 _Billy Bones (John Bloggs.)_ Green. _Captain Flint (James (?) Bloggs.)_ Green. _Long John Silver (John Bloggs)._ Orange.

“I can’t believe I’m tied with Featherstone,” Silver says, not sounding at all disturbed. “We’re all runners up. Also, hah, I’m more evil than you.”

 _Dark Lord Proprietor. (John Bloggs.)_ Red.

There’s something nasty in Flint’s stomach, and he takes a deep breath. Silver moves before he can think, clicking open the point values. Thomas gained a thousand evil points—or whatever the fuck he’s calling them—for the Courthouse attack.

Flint starts to plan.

Next to him, Silver is muttering about—something about how the points are tallied, something about being more evil than they make him out to be. But Silver's going to want immunity, so he can be counted out—

All Flint has to do to save Thomas is go down, and he has to bring Billy and Featherstone with him.

 

* * *

 

 

They send Billy home with some extra pants to disguise his disguise, and Flint exchanges the crackers for another drink.

He should probably start to watch his alcohol intake. His liver won’t last forever. But neither will anything else. He looks back over to the computer—off now, with its algorithms and its plans and—

And there is a good chance that anyone who is pardoned will end up being a government lackey, but if anyone can work that position, it’s Thomas. He was practically raised in government, for fuck’s sake, and he can’t have changed that much even if he is leading robot armies now. He can get more from immunity than Flint will be able to— and for fucks’ sake, this was his plan in the _first_ place.

Billy, Featherstone, Jack, Anne—if they get pardons, Rogers will have their leashes in his hand. They’re not manipulators like Eleanor and Max, they’re not principled and political like Thomas. Featherstone is an easily frightened schmuck, Jack and Anne can be used against each other, and Billy… well, Billy’s loyal, but he’s not trusting, not without Mr. Gates to tell him why he should be. He’ll turn on Flint, and eventually he’ll turn on Rogers, but Flint won’t much care at that point. What that group does have is a lot of weapons and a lot of money and a lot of knowledge about people on the red end of the list.

No.

And Flint— to get immunity would be to be watched, which would mean he couldn’t warn Miranda-- _Mrs. Barlow (Miranda Hamilton), grey: location unknown_ \-- about what she’d be walking back into. He isn’t sure he can live under the government’s thumb like that.

(Would it be worth it, to be with Thomas?)

(He thinks—)

(It doesn’t matter. They can’t both win, here.)

“Where are you?” Silver asks, and Flint blinks. He’s here, he’s— and Silver’s drumming his fingers on the closed laptop, and he knows. Flint’s not sure how, but he knows.

“Just thinking,” he murmurs.

“What’s the play?”

“I think,” Flint says slowly, “I think I might have to kill someone.”

Silver leans back in his chair. “Okay.”

He blinks again. “That’s it? Okay?”

“You want to get more points so that the DLP will be bumped up the list, right?”

Yeah.

(It’s been a long time, since someone’s known him. It’s almost—it’s addictive, that.)

“Yeah,” he manages.

“Okay,” Silver says again. “So what are we doing?”

“There is no  _we,_ here. If I go down it’ll bump you up, too—you’ll be in the clear.”

Silver sighs, and takes a drink straight from the bottle. “The thing is,” he says. “I don’t want immunity. I’ve got no old life to go back to. I don’t even have another place to live. This is me.” He puts the bottle down and spreads his arms. “I’m good at stealing, and I’m good at lying, and I haven’t done much murder but I’ve been good at that, too. And we’re a good team, when we have something to do. So whatever you’re planning, you’re probably going to need my help, and I don’t see any reason to give this up.”

Flint considers him. Silver is definitely good at lying, and part of him thinks that this could easily be a trap—bring in Captain Flint’s head for some bonus points with Rogers. But then he feels bad for thinking it. Silver has never been anything about honest about his intentions, from the moment they’ve met.

(“My name is John Silver,” he’d said. “I have a strong interest in becoming rich.”)

“You said you had a girlfriend,” he says. He says it because it’s one of the only things he knows about Silver’s past, and he’d learned it not an hour ago. “You don’t want to go back to her?”

“I’d love to. But things were…” he shrugs, leaving a lot in the empty places. 

“She was a superhero?”

Dark eyes flash to his. A hand clenched on the table. “Yes,” Silver says slowly. “How—”

The little things, falling into place. How careful he is when engaging supersquads. The fact that her first reaction was to attack. Superheroes have a habit of doing that.

“Just a guess,” Flint says. “Were you--?”

“No. God, know.” The laugh Silver lets out is a little sad, a little amused. “We met when I was working in a jewelry shop, actually. Specialized in custom silver designs. We were robbed, and she came to my rescue.”

It’s a cute story, if it’s true. “You were John Silver working at a silver store?”

“Not as such, no. Like I said.” Silver smiles. “I have nothing to go back to. So let’s game the system.” He flips open the netbook again and begins searching the lists. “Murder? Major property damage? Dognapping one of the royal corgis?”

“I like the last one.” There are a lot of options. Ideally, Flint would like to go for ‘world domination,’ but he might have to settle for just the British Isles. He and Thomas had been so _close_ to having London eating out of their hands. “But property damage sounds like a good first step.” They’d need a target—big and showy and whose destruction would be unforgivable. Ideally one that would get foreign governments involved. “On a scale of one to ten, how flammable do you think the British Museum is?”  

 


	2. Chapter 2

Lately, Thomas has been able to go almost an entire day without thinking about his missing year.

At first—at first it had tormented him. The house that didn't look lived in. Peter, cagey and evasive. Miranda, not answering his calls. (Nor his family, but that part, at least, was the same.) His phone had been destroyed in the attack, but nobody has gotten in touch to demand to know why he hasn’t come to work.

Maybe he wasn’t doing anything, that whole year. Maybe he was just suspended in space. Maybe he was traveling—he’s always wanted to go to Central America, and if he went in the year he can’t remember, he’s going to be _so mad_. Or maybe he’d just gotten depressed again. Maybe he was spending nights out.

His books have been rearranged and his favorite clock is missing: he called every repair shop in the damn country to see if he’d brought it in. Maybe it had been stolen. Maybe he’d sold it. He can’t imagine why he would have, but lots of things aren’t quite lining up: he’d wondered if someone important had died, but there were no familiar names in the obituaries, and his bank account, while still comfortable and embarrassingly large, hadn’t shown a recent inheritance.

(Maybe he’d been disinherited.)

It had seemed like he might have been living with _someone_ , but no one has contacted him.

Currently, it’s evening, so he’d gone _almost_ the whole day without thinking about this.

Thomas shifts his briefcase to his other hand. He’s been putting on arm muscle, lately, but the thing is still heavy. He hadn’t needed the entire ant brigade for his morning activities, but the ones he has are quite densely packed. The mission had gone perfectly, though: nobody permanently injured, but a whole lot of chaos, and a… well, not a friend, but an ally out from behind bars.

And he’s almost home, and he’ll have a cup of tea, and—

And there’s a homeless man on his stoop.

Or at least, someone trying very hard to look like a homeless man. The blanket over the head might be a bit too much, but he hadn’t asked Thomas for fashion advice. One leg is extended out in front of him—the other ends above the knee.

Yeah.

Right.

Thomas crosses his arms, ignoring the way the briefcase twists his hand. “Excuse me,” he says, channeling as much of his father as he can stomach. “Would you mind terribly moving from my porch?”

“Yes,” the man says. “Couldn’t I use your bathroom?”

He sounds quite pitiful. There are no neighbors out on the street, but that doesn’t mean that nobody’s watching. They’re going to think he’s buying drugs. Or selling drugs.

Well, better that than the truth.

“I know who you are,” Thomas tells him. “You can come in, but I want you to know that this house is full of booby traps, so if you make one wrong move—”

“Great!” The man whips a crutch out from under his blanket and hauls himself to his feet. “Lead the way.”

And that’s definitely not happening. “By all means.” Thomas unlocks the door and shoves it open, then holds his hands towards it, palm up, like the most decorative of butlers. “After you.”

Long John Silver squints at him, but walks past.

It’s hard not to get the sense that the crutch is a weapon in and of itself. When they’d fought last week, Thomas is pretty sure that a firework came out of Long John Silver’s knee: the leg is nowhere in sight now, but that doesn't mean he's unarmed. 

In a different time, Thomas might have wondered whether the urge to weaponize his walking aids were efficiency or internalized ableism. He would have wanted Long John Silver to know that he was just as valuable without a leg, even if his fake leg couldn’t shoot fireworks. He would have kept himself awake at night worrying about the man’s mental state.

Now, he’s dealt with enough shrinks (one shrink—it had been enough) trying to get him to meditate his memories back that he’s perfectly happy to let the other supervillain figure this one out on his own. Also, he’s not sure, but he thinks he might have become more of an asshole during his missing year. He’s been facing a distinct lack of purpose while waking up, but sometimes—when he dons the hood and makes a stand—he can feel a connection to… something.

It’s nice having a hobby, anyway.

It’s also liberating to not give a fuck.

They stop in his sitting room. Despite the name, the furniture is rarely sat on: it’s the stiff, decorative type. Long John Silver doesn’t seem to have a problem with draping himself over the couch, resting his crutch against his knees. Like he owns the bloody place. 

“So,” he says. “Lord Thomas Hamilton.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Thomas says, before he remembers that he’s evil now. But—does Long John Silver know he’s evil? He _did_ already warn him of the booby traps, so that cat might be out of the bag and into the frying pan.

Or whatever.

Silver’s mouth twitches, giving Thomas an excuse to study his facial hair.

(It’s nice facial hair.)

(In fact, when he discards the blanket, it’s to reveal that he has nice hair in general. And face. Damn.)

(Also, Thomas is looking _at_ his face.)

“You’re not wearing a mask,” he says.

“Well.” Silver shrugs. “I did come to your house, I figured it was best to even the scales a bit. Please, do sit down.”

“You can’t tell me to sit down in my own house,” says Thomas, sitting down.

His phone buzzes to tell him all of his security cameras have been disabled.

Of course they have.

“So.” Thomas gives his biggest, meet-the-queen smile. “What can I help you with today?”

He’s hoping manners will throw Long John Silver off, but if they do he doesn’t show it as he leans forward over his knee. 

“Well.” He draws out the word, eyes flicking over Thomas’s face. “We haven’t met. You’re new on the scene, relatively speaking. So you might not know. But we London villains have a… camaraderie. A band of brothers, ‘we happy few’ kind of vibe. We help each other. I figured it was time to welcome you into the fold.”

Last week he shot a firework at Thomas. Out of his knee.

“And do you welcome everyone by showing up unannounced at their houses? How did you find me, by the way?”

“I just took what I knew of you, narrowed down some options, tracked you after your field trip this morning, figured out where you were going, and beat you there.” Silver says it like it’s nothing, but it’s clearly not. Thomas isn’t going to assume he went to all this work to have tea.

(Should he offer him tea?)

(No. Evil Thomas does not offer other evil people tea.)  

“If you followed me this morning, you’ll know that I’m already helping my local villain community.”

Silver’s grimace is weirdly attractive. It’s been way too long since Thomas got laid. He isn’t sure precisely how long, but it’s been. A while.

“For the sake of both our futures,” Silver says, “I’m going to pretend that your version of solidarity isn’t breaking Charles Vane out of jail.”

Yes, Charles hadn’t spoken well of Silver and Flint, either. It’s one of the things that had drawn Thomas to him as an ally. “So we help each other, except for Charles? That doesn’t seem fair.”  

“Well, we _are_ evil.”

“Yes.” Thomas has, overall, quite enjoyed being evil. He can get a lot more done that way. “And as such, I’m sure you have more goals than just welcoming me to the club.”

“I was working up to that.” Silver stops leaning forward, but it doesn’t make his gaze any less intense. Thomas can’t help but feel that Silver knows more about him than he’s saying, but maybe that’s just what he wants him to think.

“Is this about the other night?” Thomas asks. “Are you here to get revenge?”

“Revenge?”

“You know where I live. You know my name. I assume you did a basic google search.”  If Silver thinks he’s keeping his accident a secret, or is clever for uncovering it, then he’s going to have to rethink that. “You know that it was Captain Flint that caused my injury. I know he brought that same weapon to our confrontation. I can only assume Flint figured out who I was and meant to tie up that loose end.”

“Yeah I see how that looks bad,” Silver mutters. Then, louder, “he saved you. You were the one that punched him afterwards.”

That’s—true, actually.  

“I thought you would have recognized that. I was hoping to build on that… working relationship.” There’s something about the way he says relationship that makes the hair on Thomas’s neck stand up.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Have we met? Before Tuesday?”

Silver gives him a very slow once-over. “No,” he says. “I’d have remembered you.”

He’s put Thomas off guard, in his own home. It’s not a great feeling, but it’s a strangely enticing one all the same. Evil Thomas, he’s realizing, loves a challenge just as much as Good Thomas had.

“Because I’m getting the feeling that you know something about my missing time that I don’t.”

“About that.” Silver tilts his head a little, furrows his brow. It’s a look of such genuine concern that it must be fake. “You truly remember nothing?”

Sometimes. “Nothing,” Thomas says.

“So what made you decide to become a villain?”

T _he corruption inherent in the system_ isn’t an answer that’s likely to go over well. _I needed something to do_ might go better. He isn’t going to give Silver any more of himself, though.

At least, not yet.

“We all have our origin stories,” he says. “I’m sure you do too.”

Silver pats the spot where his leg would have been. “I lost something very dear to me,” he says. His fingers trail over his thigh as he pulls them back.

Thomas looks back at his face. “Well,” he says. “I suppose I did too.”

They hold eye contact.

“What do you want?” Thomas asks, and Silver is the one who blinks. His expression isn’t there long enough for Thomas to get a read on it, but there was _something_ there. This man doesn’t need a mask to hide himself.

Mark Evil Thomas down as officially intrigued.

“Many things,” Silver says.

“From me.”

“Many things,” Silver says again, doing something with his eyebrows that certainly isn’t a wiggle, but isn’t _not_ a wiggle.

A few of Thomas’s brain cells seem to be misfiring. “Are you flirting with me?”

Silver tilts his head down and to the side—not enough to be coy but enough to look like he’s considering it. “Would you be more likely to lend me your robot ant army if I was?”

He has to think about that one for a moment. “I’d be more likely,” he concludes, because evil people can be honest, and he doesn’t want to rule anything out. “But not enough to actually do it.  I don’t trust you.”

“Smart choice, in this business. I did bring something to trade, though.” Silver pats his pockets for a second before pulling out a USB. “You heard about Rogers’s immunity plan?”

“Yes.” At length. Charles had had some strong opinions on the matter, and demonstrated said opinions in a way that got him arrested. It had been a very hectic twenty-four hours.  

“We’ve got the program they’re using to calculate the candidates. It updates in live time—I stole a cop car earlier to test it. Went up fifty EP.”

“EP?”

“Evil points. It’s what we’re calling them, anyway.”

Thomas stares at it. He thinks that he would have been for the immunity program, in the past: it sounds like something he would have come up with. Sometimes he wonders if he _did_ come up with it, and blabbed to Peter. But now— well to start with, to be given a pardon he’d have to give them everything else in return (his name, his history,) and there isn’t much point in doing that if they don’t already know who he is. It would mean living out the rest of his life on a watch list, at best.

Also, he’d just taken down an iconic public building, and broken a known criminal out of jail. He’s not going to be on the Nice List. 

Not to mention Charles would probably get himself killed without Thomas to help.

But being able to track Rogers’s information—track what they know and what they think—that’s valuable. It’s valuable and Silver knows it.

“How do I know it’s what you say it is?”

“If it’s not, you’ll know where to find me.”

Ah. The ants. Thomas considers him. “What do you need them for?”

“Crime.” Silver’s broad smile looks a little out of practice. “We want to take down a building. Low civilian casualties, big embarrassment to the government and our world standing.”

Yeah, Silver has his number. “When do you need it?”

“Hmm, Monday. Returned to you directly after.”

Thomas looks at Silver’s smile, and at the USB, and at the briefcase next to his ankle. “Why did Captain Flint…” save him? Attack him? “Intervene, before?”

Silver’s smile drops. “I don’t know,” he says. “I was rather hoping you could tell me that.”

He can’t. Flint had said _it’s James,_ like Thomas was supposed to know what he meant. He knows a lot of men named James. His first thought had been Peterson, his friend from primary school, but that doesn’t make sense. Then there had been James Smith from uni and James McDoug his father’s friend and James Holt from some email chains back when he was still working with the bureau and Miranda’s boyfriend James who he never got around to meeting and at least a dozen other Jameses besides.

“If you find out,” he says. “Do please let me know.”

“If you lend me the ants.”

Silver could probably charm the socks off a porcupine; Thomas isn’t going to pretend that he’s special. He’s got a voice in his head telling him this is a bad idea, but what is the point of being evil if you can’t make bad decisions sometimes?

“One week,” he says. “No damage, no arrests.”

“Done.” Silver’s smile is back, and he extends a hand.

 

* * *

 

 

He’d been planning on making a grand entrance—bursting in with a good one-liner and a rolling suitcase full of robot ants—but he doesn’t see Flint when he walks in the door. Silver drops the suitcase and sighs before swinging himself over to the couch.

Rolling suitcases when he’s not wearing his leg are not awesome.

The problem: his leg is fried, because the fucking police car he stole was a stick, and somehow he could fire rockets out of his knee but he couldn’t operate the damn clutch.

He hates his fucking leg.

(“Then just get a normal prosthetic,” Flint had said once. “So you can, you know. Walk.”

“Could a normal prosthetic do this?” Silver had countered, stamping his foot, setting a small fire, and busting the ankle joint.)

Thomas Hamilton—and he cannot believe that Flint’s secret husband has a name as poncy as _Thomas Hamilton_ —had been helpful enough to provide an instruction manual for his ants. Seeing as he has two days to hopefully not destroy the British Museum, Silver gets reading.

He’s trying to figure out what the hell kind of programming language they’re using when Flint makes his appearance, late that night.

It’s not a good look. Silver, leg off, making the small robots run back and forth across the coffee table, little front-motors whirring as they look for something to destroy.

(They’re more like drills than ants, he has realized. The DLP— _Thomas_ — is a fucking genius.)

“What,” Flint says, but he doesn’t inflect it like a question.

“I borrowed them for our raid.” Silver looks up, because his life may depend on tracking Flint’s every feeling for the next few minutes.

“These are—”

“Thomas Hamilton’s, yes.” He wants to look away, seem unconcerned, but he can’t: the things Flint’s face does when he hears the name are fascinating. A tightening around the eyes, the mouth. The eyebrows. God, to think that this man had once been a mystery to him. “I tracked him down. We had a nice chat.”

Flint’s torn between anger and curiosity, and Silver waits patiently to see which one will win.

“Is he—you—” His throat is working, trying to swallow. Failing—oh, there it goes. Swallow successful. “How is he?” And this, this sad pining Flint, is not one that is going to be useful right now.

“Well,” Silver says. He uses the same tone he had with Hamilton—letting his tongue linger on the roof of his mouth, rolling his lip in. “Says that year is still a total blank. But, damn. If you don’t want to make out with him to restore his memory, I can give it a shot.” 

He’d said it to try and make his partner angry, to perhaps speed up the timeline of their plan: and with a jolt Silver realizes he’s miscalculated. Because he wasn’t prepared for how _crushed_ Flint looks, how bad vulnerable looks on him, even if for a second.

(Thomas Hamilton, it occurs to him, has seen Flint without his masks. Thomas Hamilton has seen what it looks like when Flint trusts. Thomas Hamilton has seen Flint at his most honest and Thomas Hamilton has seen Flint on his knees and in his bed and Silver’s picturing it, now.)

(He’s not prepared for the _want_ that’s twisted up inside him.)

(And he realizes.)

He could have them. Have them both. Hamilton doesn't know he's married, and he’d been looking. He’d been following the lines Silver had made with his hands and his body. He’d take Silver if he offered.

And Flint—

God, Flint would be easy. All Silver would have to do is remind him Thomas is out of reach—that Thomas blames him for what happened. Let Flint think that Silver is the closest he’s ever going to get again. Make him just a little angry, let him taste Thomas on Silver’s tongue, and Flint would be on top of him. Silver’s goes a little weak at the knee thinking about it. God. _God._

(Silver is a thief, and he could steal them both.)

The thought sickens him just as much as it excites him.

Because Flint wouldn’t want to look at him, afterward. Wouldn’t want to be near him. Because he’d hate himself for betraying Thomas and he’d still need Silver, he’d still want Silver, but he would loathe him for it and the best friendship of Silver’s life would turn heavy and bitter.

And Thomas—Thomas would realize how he was being used to torture someone he once loved. His memory will come back eventually, Silver is sure. And he’d be disgusted, too.

“I’m sorry,” Silver says. “It was a bad joke.”

“Are you.” Flint stops. He couldn’t know what Silver had just been considering, but now Silver is the one who can’t look at him. Can’t let himself be read. Instead he jams his crutch under his arm and tries to work his leg out from under the coffee table.   

“I was making sure he wasn’t shagging Charles Vane.”

“Was that… an option?”

“Apparently not.”  Charles has always approached monogamy with the same unbridled emotion that he has approached everything else he did— specifically pyrotechnics, theft, and tax fraud. Silver can’t imagine him in a casual relationship, and he can’t imagine him in a committed relationship with someone who had looked at other men the way Thomas had looked at Silver.

Silver’s entire body hurts.

“I’m going for a walk,” he says, even though he doesn’t need to tell anyone where he’s going because he’s a grownup goddamn supervillain. “I’ll be back.”

“Silver—”

He shakes his head and swings himself past Flint and to the door.  

_Jesus Christ._

Out the door. Down the stairs. He’s wanted Flint since he met him, in the casual way one lusts after a television star or a hot coworker. Maybe it was knowing that he was already taken that had set Silver’s greedy heart beating, or maybe it was meeting Thomas (fucking smart, quick-tongued Thomas,) or maybe it’s been a long time coming and he’s only now becoming aware.

It doesn’t matter.

He’s a villain and a thief but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a good friend.

He is going to be the most stabilizing, essential third wheel since the invention of the wheelbarrow, so that they’ll keep him around. It means Operation XOXO—the actual one, not the one Flint knows about—has to be a success.

It also means he’s going to be in continued proximity to what he desperately wants, but Silver makes regular visits to see the crown jewels and he hasn’t cracked open with longing yet. It’ll be fine.

(Maybe this isn’t what being a good friend means, but he’ll at least look the part.) 

He’s two blocks down the road when he realizes he doesn’t have any destination in mind, and should probably slow down. He’s half a block past that when someone grabs his shoulder and yanks him into an alleyway.

There’s a knife in his sleeve and he’s got it out but it’s knocked to the ground and he’s about to engage Backup Protocol on his crutch when—

“It’s me,” Madi hisses.

And even though they are technically not on the same side, her voice is enough to give him pause.

“Are you here to arrest me?” Silver asks.

“Ssh. If anyone comes by, pretend we’re fighting.”

“Aren’t we?”

She huffs and takes a step back, letting the street lamp light up half her face. She looks good. She always looks good, but right now she’s rocking her superhero suit, and it’s—good. Yeah.

Also, _Good_. Which might be a problem, since Silver’s alignment is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum.

“I hope not,” she says. “Haven’t you been looking at the list?”

“The… list?”

She widens her eyes at him pointedly, and Silver’s brain skips a few tracks as he puts some things together. “It wasn’t from Max,” he guesses. “No, it _was_ from Max, but she got it from you. You’re the leak!”

She claps a hand over his mouth. “Say that a little louder, why don’t you.” It takes a second to dislodge her, but Silver’s busy reassessing the last few days. They’ve all been suspicious of Rogers, worried about being made into government assets or constantly threatened, but Madi actually _works_ with Rogers, she expected them to find something wrong with the list, she knew it was corrupted—

“I knew there was something off about it,” he says when his mouth is finally free. “I’m way more evil than Featherstone.”

Madi’s eyeroll is visible even in the dark. “Of course,” she says. “Of course. I hand you evidence of a conspiracy and you get distracted by who can be the baddest bad. Eleanor said you and Flint were supposed to be some great political mind.” 

“Well,” Silver says. “We’ve been a little distracted.”

“Christ.”

Madi slouches back against the opposite wall. There’s what looks like a garbage stain on it, but Silver isn’t going to bring it up if she’s not. With the streets this still, this could almost be peaceful.

The most peaceful the two of them had been in a long time, anyway.

“So what’s the conspiracy?” he asks.

“You didn’t think it was even a little weird that Rackham and Bonny were considered good candidates for reformation?”

“Of course we thought it was weird,” Silver says. “We all just assumed it was because Max and Anne are sleeping together.”

“Wait.” Madi frowns. “Really? And Rackham is just going with this?”

“Well he doesn’t seem _thrilled,_ but who the hell knows with those two.”

“Fascinating,” she says. “But seriously, after the Lima heist, you didn’t wonder?”

It’s Silver’s turn to frown. “We thought they got away with the Lima heist.” And then he thinks of Anne’s proficiency with knives. “If they did it, I mean, which they may not have." She's far far better with knives than Silver is at backpedaling. "Anyone could have done it. Who’s to say, really?”

“John. Everyone and their in-laws knows that they did it. The only reason it hasn't been announced is because Rogers made everyone keep it quiet—his plan is to give them conditional immunity and then pressure them to give him the money under the table. Then when they toe out of line he'll arrest them and take the rest of their stuff.”

“Well.” That’s a lot more canny than Silver had expected from London’s clean-cut leading super douche. “That’s dark.”

“Everyone else on the list is going to face the same thing—work for Rogers and Ashe, or get stuck in a box somewhere. There’s no middle management, no oversight.”

“My god,” Silver realizes. “It really _is_ like _Suicide Squad._ ”

“It’s really not.”

“I never actually saw _Suicide Squad_. What do you want us to do about Rogers?”

“Nothing. Do nothing about Rogers. We’re working on it. But don’t let anyone turn themselves in, either.”

It’s hard not to grin. “I’m sorry, are you against cleaning up the streets? My, my.”

She shoves him, but the gesture seems almost friendly. “I did the soul searching, and I hate Rogers more than I dislike you guys. I don’t trust him with an army of supervillains. He might actually make you competent.”

“Hey!”

Her smile is a flash in the darkness. “What? You’re all terrible. _I_  would make a better Supervillain than you.”

Silver thinks of the robot army he’s not planning to use. “Please become a supervillain.”

“No!” She shoves him again. They stand there in the relative silence for a minute. It’s the first time they’ve been together since they _were_ together, but Silver doesn’t know how to comment on that.

The silence is friendly, though, and he basks in it.

“So what’s going on? You said you’d been distracted.”

Silver stops basking. “Oh.” He considers how much he can say, because he’s never been good at keeping things from Madi. And he wants to tell her, wants to talk about this with someone not caught up in their little bubble—he just doesn’t want to give her enough that she find and arrest them.

Then again, she probably knows where he lives. She could have done that long ago.

What the hell. “Flint’s married,” he says. “And I’ve realized that I _really_ want to sleep with him.”

Madi blinks. “Are any villains in this city _not_ caught up in a love triangle?”

It takes a second to think about this. “Charles Vane?” He’d just been thinking about how monogamous the guy was. But Madi is shaking her head.

“Eleanor’s sleeping with Rogers.”

Of course she is. That woman’s superpower is knowing exactly who she has to be sleeping with at any given time for maximum survival and personal gain. Silver’s always been in awe of this ability.

“Also, she sold Vane out yesterday.”

“That doesn’t mean they're over. Eleanor would sell Vane out for a milk dud. Not even the whole box. Just a single dud. And he's always known it.”

“Eleanor doesn’t like milk duds,” Madi says.

“I know. Any fun drama from your end?”

“Nothing this good. So are you in love with Flint?”

Is he? Silver thinks of love, and he thinks of Madi. The feelings he had for her were warm and sharp and soft and angry all tied up together inside of him.

Are his feelings for Flint that different?

Maybe a little angrier. A little sharper. He doesn’t think that’s how love is supposed to work, exactly, but he’s never been very good at it.

“I hope not,” Silver says. Then—“Billy!”

Madi looks around, hand going to her hip, to which is presumably attached a very cool and high-tech weapon. “What?”

“Billy. He isn’t involved in a love triangle.” Silver looks up, letting his head rest against the cold concrete of the building behind him. “I can’t believe I forgot about Billy.”

Madi still looks confused. “Who the fuck is Billy?” 

 

* * *

 

 

Flint wakes up to thirty unread text messages.

Normally that would mean there’s a crisis, but Silver had put word out last night that they should trust Rogers even less than they already do. It hasn’t changed their plans for the Museum—they might not be needing to get a pardon for Thomas anymore, but, as Silver pointed out, it’s still a great ‘fuck you.’

(“Let them know that we aren’t going to fall for any of his bullshit,” Silver had said.)

Flint thinks he really just wants an excuse to use Thomas’s ant army, but he’s not going to argue the point.

The texts, though, are not about their immediate political futures. Instead, five different people, including Eleanor, have linked him to a buzzfeed article and followed up with a string of emojis.

He clicks the link.

 **TWENTY SUPERVILLAIN COUPLES WHO SHOULD GET TOGETHER IMMEDIATELY,** screams the headline.

Whoever Madi Scott is, she’s clearly got some time on her hands.

Flint goes back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess in the true spirit of Dr. Horrible, everything got darker than I'd expected. Anything funny is probably because of lacecat.


	3. Chapter 3

Charles calls him at six in the morning, because Charles has no sense of decency.

 _“We’re not fucking,”_ he says, apropos of nothing.

“Um.” Thomas is awake, out of bed, and dressed, sitting at his kitchen table with some toast, but his brain hasn’t come online yet and he hasn’t even finished the front section of the newspaper. “Should we be?”

_“No. But what’s actually important here is that Eleanor is talking to some Buzzfeed writer.”_

“I think anyone can write for Buzzfeed,” says Thomas, who still has no idea what’s going on. “Did something happen?”

_“Hang on.”_

His phone dings with a link, and he opens the article in question. It’s not actually an article. It’s barely a listicle. “Mr. Gates and Mrs. Barlow?” Thomas reads, confused. 

 

> _Neither has been seen in months. Can you prove they_ aren’t _on their honeymoon? Was Mr. Gates actually Mr. Barlow the whole time? Show me the evidence he wasn’t, I double-dare you._

 

 _“_ _What? "_ Charles huffs. "No, _past that.”_

 

> _6: Charles Vane and “Billy Bones”_
> 
> _Don’t know who Billy Bones is? Neither did I. He’s that guy in the skeleton costume. There are no pictures of him with Charles Vane (who prefers to be called ‘The Ranger’, but hasn’t been referred to as such since that time he bellowed ‘my name is Charles Vane, motherf***ers,’ at the top of his lungs in now infamous security cam footage) but hey, pair the spares, am I right? According to word on the street, Vane is 150% single right now: “No really, we aren’t getting back together, he can f*** whoever he wants.” – a confidential source._

 

_"It's Number three.”_

“Oh.” Thomas tries not to laugh, and fails. This is the best possible thing he could ever have woken up to.

 

> _3: The “Dark Lord Proprietor” and Charles Vane_
> 
> _We thought they were just a causal team-up, but the DLP_ did _break Vane out of jail the other day. (Note: neither Buzzfeed nor the author condones jailbreaks.) Given how little we know of the DLP, all options are on the table. Also, as was mentioned before, Charles Vane is really,_ really _single. So single that “listing other people he could be f***ing isn’t going to get a reaction out of me, so please, keep doing it, I don’t care.” – A confidential source._

 

“Eloquent source." Thomas stifles another snicker.

 _“Eleanor,”_ Charles says, as though there was any doubt in anyone’s mind. Thomas hasn’t been on the villain scene very long but even he knows all of the sordid details—he’s also learned enough to stop thinking them exaggerated. _“What the hell is she doing?”_

Thomas doesn’t know how to break this to him gently. “Not you.”  

_“Thanks, fuckwit. I need to borrow the ants.”_

There is not enough coffee in the world for this conversation. “And why is that?”

 _“Well I need two ants to tail Eleanor, and then about five hundred thousand to form the Buzzfeed logo on the side of whatever building she’s hiding out in, and then the rest of them are going to tunnel in from the bottom and open up all her bags of perishable foods and disconnect her fridge so it all goes bad, she’d_ hate _that, she’s weird about food waste. And I’m not an idiot, I know she’s sleeping with Rogers, so I need some to carry out his underwear and, ideally, hang a pair over every doorway on Whitehall, but definitely the Ministry of Defense.”_

“You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this,” Thomas says.

_“So?”_

So. Thomas thumbs down the Buzzfeed list as he tries to find a way to word this. “So, I don’t have the ants right now, but I’ll have them back on Tuesday. Can you wait until then?”

Number four on the list is _‘Featherstone and Integrity: seriously, dude. Get some.’_ Thomas thinks that maybe he should take this advice as well, but giving Silver the ants had seemed like a reasonable decision at the time.

(It hadn’t, but he’d done it anyway.)

_“What do you mean you don’t have the ants right now?”_

“I traded them to someone for the week.”

_“Who the fuck—”_

“Long John Silver.” Better to rip off that band-aid. “And Flint, I guess. They traded for—”

But Vane is laughing. God spare him from having to keep up with the man’s emotions. _“They’re number one!”_ he crows. _“Oh my god, I almost forgot, I gotta go and print up fifty copies to post around town where they’ll see it.”_

This seems like an overreaction, but everything Charles has ever done has seemed like an overreaction, so Thomas is just going to roll with it. “Is it going to offend them?” Silver had definitely not acted like someone trying to defend his heterosexuality.

_“No. It’ll torture them. They’ll never be able to address it. It’ll be the—the elephant in the room. Emotional torment for weeks. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll come by for the ants on Tuesday. Call you later!”_

He hangs up.

Thomas scrolls to the bottom of the list.

 

> _1: “Captain Flint” and “Long” John Silver_
> 
> _You’ve thought it. We’ve_ all _thought it. If you haven’t thought it, then you’ve never seen that picture from the Truck Heist of last winter. You know the one. Were they about to fight? Were they about to hug? The debate divided the_ Sun _for a month. Clearly they missed the most obvious answer: they were about to fight and_ then _hug. Or not hug.  Scuttlebutt says they already share a lair and a henchman—does this make them common-law married already? Also for your consideration, an important follow-up question: Silver is clearly shorter than Flint, so what is so “long” about him? Does Flint know? He should probably find out. (Note: neither Buzzfeed nor the author endorse having an evil lair, henchmen, or stealing a truck full of live bees to sell on the bee black market.)_

 

The idea of Flint ‘finding out’ makes something go weird in Thomas’s gut. Which is weird. Is it jealousy? There’s no reason to be jealous over this: Silver had been flirting with him, and Thomas may have considered taking him up on said flirtation (not at the time, just… later, when he had like, space to think about it, you know, like you do, at length, maybe,) but he’d never been under any illusion that he wasn’t being manipulated. He doesn’t know either of them. Whatever they get up to is none of his business.

Except for the part where it is, because they have his ants.

He makes a mental note to keep an eye on where the ants are going.

It’s not jealousy.

It’s just. Being careful.

 

* * *

 

 

Flint doesn’t get why Silver doesn’t think this is funny. _He_ thinks it’s funny, and he is, he has been told, a hard man to amuse.

“You’re not upset that the writer paired your ex-husband with Charles Vane?” Silver asks, looking uneasy. To be fair, he’s also covered with robot ants with little drill-bits in their mouths. It’s enough to set any man on edge.

“Well, you were pretty certain they’re not actually together.” 

“They’re not. And I don’t think we’re common-law married, either.”

Since the government doesn’t know where they’re living, no. “Who would get Billy in the divorce, though?” Flint asks, and he’s laughing again. Silver still looks unamused.

But he’s allowed to feel okay. He’s got a plan, and Thomas is not sleeping with Charles Vane, and they’ll bring down the British Museum (and not imperialism, exactly, but the _implication_ will be there.)

Everything is fine.

(If he stops laughing, he might never stop raging.)

Miranda and Mr. Gates, Jesus Christ. They’d make a fascinating honeymoon. He texts the link to Hal, because Hal should be kept on his toes even in retirement.

“This’ll piss off Rackham, at least,” Silver says. He sticks his hand out from under a pile of ants to tap on his phone. “He’s going to be upset he wasn’t on there more.”

“And Eleanor.” Flint reads from number two— “Rumor has it that the Madame is entering negotiations under Rogers’s Immunity Act. What this means for London’s  own rogues gallery is unknown, but we _do_ know it will mean a lot more time spent with Eleanor Guthrie, former Queen of Thieves. Word on the street says that these two have a history—will this be enough to rekindle it? After all, Eleanor Guthrie is apparently over and done with her most recent long-term relationship. Quote, ‘Why do you keep asking me about this? It’s seriously over. He can do whatever he wants—wait, this is about me? What the hell are you writing, anyway?’ A confidential source.’” He looks up. “I mean, who the hell did she say all this to?”

“Dunno.” Silver becomes very interested in the ants. They _are_ quite interesting—but it makes Flint pause.

“Silver, do we know who Madi Scott is?”

“Dunno,” Silver says again.

Silver is a magnificent liar.

But.

(Flint can’t handle a betrayal from Silver, not now, not when half his well-being is dependent on Silver being honest about Thomas, not when Hal is quiet and Miranda is dark and Eleanor is trading her freedom for whatever she thinks she can get from Rogers.)

(He looks at Silver, and he stops laughing.)

“Why are we number one on the list?”

“It’s probably our chemistry, Captain, I really couldn’t say—”

“Is Madi Scott your superhero ex-girlfriend who you met Saturday night when you went for a walk?” It only makes sense: the timing, the placement, the quotes. Eleanor’s probably rubbing elbows with a lot of superheroes these days, and if Flint wasn’t so annoyed (not betrayed, he wouldn’t have a right to feel betrayed, even if it had felt like she was the only one on his side for the last few years,) by this, he’d be proud of her.

It would also explain why the bit about Anne and Max is so on point, and targeted right at Rackham’s insecurities. _Bonny and Calico Jack have been tight since the beginning of their villainous careers, and nobody wants to break up a good (evil) thing, but they’re all modern people, right? No reason Bonny/Madame is off the table. Or out of the bathtub._

“Yes.” Silver says it like he’s expecting a fight. “We were talking about Anne and Max in passing, but she’s not allowed to go after Rackham, so I guess all she can do is make fun of him online. And the reason we’re number one is because she’s messing with me, because the superhero life clearly leaves little room for joy.”

(Did Silver tell her about Flint and Thomas?)

(Is this—)

Flint thinks. “Which one is Madi Scott?”

“Dreds. Black. Cheekbones. Great front kick.”

“Oh.” Flint is pretty sure he’s been on the receiving end of one of those kicks, and between Thomas and Silver, he’s been kicked enough lately. Maybe he’d rather she speculate about his personal life, as long as it doesn’t come anywhere near the truth.

(He glances at Silver again. Frowning at the ants. He’s the only person Flint has left now, if you don’t count Billy, and he doesn’t count Billy.)

(Still, nowhere near the truth.)

 

* * *

 

 

Hours later and it's just—it’s bothering Thomas, and it’s going to drive him insane.

The article. It’s funny! It’s objectively, very funny, if one is into crass humor, which Thomas is, sometimes. Obviously. It’s funny.

And it’s _bothering_ him.

_What’s so “long” about him? Does Flint know? He should probably find out._

Silver’s hot. Silver’s hot as shit. But that doesn’t mean Thomas has any grounds to feel jealous over him—he’s never been a jealous person so that can’t be what this is.

Whatever it is is enough to get him to keep an eye on his ants, though. Silver’s been keeping them in one place—probably the _lair_ that he shares with Flint—but by evening they're on the move, winding through London.

Government embarrassment, Silver had said.

They’re getting very close to—

Oh.

_Shit._

Evil Thomas should not care about thousands of years worth of art and culture. Evil Thomas should not care what ends his ants are used for. Evil Thomas should be glad of the chaos that’s going to be caused by—

Evil Thomas can care about whatever the fuck he wants.

He grabs his Proprietor hood and calls Charles.

 

* * *

 

 

The ants make the heist a little more hands-off than Flint is used to: instead of being on the scene, they’re on a rooftop a block away while Silver types away on a tablet. Two blocks down, on the other side of the museum, Billy is watching for interference.

Flint looks through his night binoculars again. Silver is sitting on the roof, prosthetic leg splayed to one side. Flint has assumed a frog-like stance, ready to move,  but not tall enough to be easily seen. 

“These things went faster when Thomas was using them,” he mutters.

“Well, the walls are thicker. And he’d probably been going for an hour before you got there. Jesus.” Silver keeps typing. “Everybody’s a critic. You want to learn how to program these ants?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s too late.” Silver puts the laptop down on top of a vent box. “We just have to wait for a bit. They’ll get through.” He hesitates, looking between Flint and the columned buildings.

There’s something about Bloomsbury that just makes Flint itch.

“What?” he snaps.

“Nothing.”

It’s clearly not nothing. Flint pulls his coat up to his ears, tucking his chin inside. Without the night vision, it’s too dark to see any progress the ants are making. He reminds himself that that’s the point. Nobody will be able to see them. They'll have the building down before anyone realizes what's happening. 

 _Patrol car,_ Billy texts. _Think just routine._

Still, Silver pauses.

He’s being overly cautious, and that’s not helping Flint’s sense of unease.

 _“What?”_ he says, again. "What's going on?" 

“Why do you think something’s up?”

Because he knows Silver. Because he’d handed Silver all he needed to know _him_ last week, and since then he’s been assessing. He knows Silver, enough to know that there’s something vital he’s missing. Has been missing for days. And without that missing piece, he doesn't know how to trust him like he had before. “Tell me,” he says instead.

Silver shrugs and bends back over the laptop. “I was just wondering,” he says. “If you ever went here with Thomas.”

Flint looks around. The night is sickly yellow in the street lamps. “To the roof?” It’s not as out of the question as it would seem. They’d been on a lot of roofs together, in situations of varying legality.

“To the museum. It seems like the type of place you’d like.”

Thomas loves to hate the museum, almost as much as he loves to go there. But Silver has a reason for asking. “Why?”

“Just… curious.”

“No you’re not.”

“No.” Silver smiles at him. “I’m not. I was just wondering if your decision to go after the museum had more to do with you than it has to do with—”

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Flint pulls his coat up even higher. Because he’s cold. Not as any sort of defense mechanism: he’s already got a mask for that.  “We’re on the goddamn job.”

The screen flashes red, and Silver frowns at it. “Hang on.”

“What was that?”

Silver keeps typing. “They aren’t moving. The ants are down.”

“Yes,” a voice says.

Flint goes still.

 

* * *

 

 

Silver stands as he turns. “DLP,” he says, sounding cheerful for someone who’s heist had just gotten sabotaged. Thomas eyes his knee in case it’s still a rocket launcher. “Hey.”

Next to him, Flint stands as well. He’s looking between Silver and Thomas like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Just looks side to side, side to side.  

Thomas wants to ask him if he’s okay, but Silver is pulling off his mask.

“So,” Silver says. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t say your target was the British Museum!” Thomas hisses. He’s a little embarrassed about his good side coming out, but he’s got a lot of art to defend, here.

“You didn’t ask.”

That’s true. He didn’t actually ask.

Flint moves, then, pulling his own mask off. And it’s dark, but god, that’s a nice jaw. That’s unfair. They can’t both be hot. Rude, is what it is. And then Flint steps forward a little, the light on his face gets a little better, and—

Thomas hates him, sort of. But.

That’s. Wow.

The things he could _do_ to that man.

(Unfair.)

Flint turns on one heel to scowl at Silver. “What the fuck are you playing," he hisses. His voice is pitched like he’s trying to prevent Thomas from hearing.

Silver takes what looks like a very wise step back. “What did I do?”

“You think I believe it’s a goddamn coincidence—?”

Thomas opens his mouth to say that Silver didn’t tell him to come, but… Silver _did_ , didn’t he? He knew there were trackers in those ants, knew that Thomas would watch them, and picked a target Thomas couldn’t let him destroy.

He didn’t give Long John Silver enough credit.

(And Long John Silver may have given Thomas too much—he isn’t sure if he’d have followed them at all if he hadn’t been emotionally compromised by Buzzfeed.)

(Also, if he’s been lured here to get murdered he’s going to be very pissed off.)

“Either way, he’s here now, right?” Silver says. “So you can—”

“I can’t—” Flint looks back at Thomas, and he doesn’t look ready to kill. He looks… pretty fucking miserable, actually.

Jesus.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says. “Do we know each other?” He’s starting to get the feeling that they’re supposed to know each other.

Flint opens his mouth, closes it again, and then scowls at Silver. Now _there’s_ a face that looks like murder. Thomas leans up on his toes a little in case he has to run. Scaling the building had been pretty easy, but getting down is going to require a lot more fire-escape hopping than he thinks he can do silently. 

And it'll take the ants at least a minute to get here, although he’s not defenseless in the meantime.

He waits.

“I,” Flint says. “We.” And then he stops.

“Oh my god.” Silver steps forward, landing a little heavily on his prosthetic leg. That’ll be to Thomas’s advantage in a fight, unless it shoots fire. “You met this man, went into the villain business with him, got married, had what I can only imagine is a lot of _fantastic_ sex, and then designed a ray gun that accidentally fried your brains. None of that rings any bells for you?”

No.

But it does sound like something Thomas would do.

Flint rounds on Silver again. _“You lying son of a whore."_

Silver doesn’t back up this time. “I think what you mean is 'thank you.' Why, you’re welcome, Captain, it was nothing.”

“You sabotaged our whole fucking operation on the chance that, what, he’d show up, and what did you think would happen?”

“I’m not here to sabotage—” Thomas says, and then stops, because that’s exactly what he’s here to do. “Never mind, I am. Carry on.”

They both look at him, and then away.

 “For fuck’s sake.” Silver raises his hands. “I just solved all your problems. You didn’t actually want to destroy the museum, you wanted to talk to Hamilton. He doesn’t want a goddamn pardon, so it doesn’t matter if he’s implicated. Problem. Solved.”

“I told you—”  

“You could have talked to him any day since he woke up. That house with all the security you couldn’t possibly have accessed? All I did was ask to be invited in. There are a thousand ways you could have gotten in touch, and you didn’t. You know why?” Their voices are getting louder, and eventually someone is going to come investigate. But Charles hasn’t texted a warning, and Thomas can’t think because he’s trying—

This situation would make the most sense if Flint and Silver were lying to him, had staged this little argument, but Thomas doesn’t think that’s the case. There’s something about Flint, like a name he’s forgotten, and if Thomas thinks even harder he may actually go mad.

“One week. One _fucking_ week and you can’t keep yourself from sticking your nose in. Whatever you think you know about me—”

“You’re afraid. You _were_ afraid.” Silver drops down to a more conversational tone that belies his words. “Because you were afraid he’d blame you, which he did, and he wouldn’t remember you, which he doesn’t, and you didn’t want to have to tell him about you. Well. He knows everything now.”

It’s so close—the lethologica is smothering him, and if Thomas could just—

“You utter _shit,”_ Flint spits. And he’s still talking, still snarling something that’s just as personal, just as cutting, (“just couldn’t handle having an aspect of me that you couldn’t control—”) but Thomas takes a step back because Flint has said that before. He’s said that about Long John Silver before.

( _That utter_ shit.)

(Before Thomas met him, before Flint had met him, there had been a schedule stolen and Flint had—)

( _James_ had—)

(There had been a proposal, and Thomas _had_ come up with it, given it to Peter Ashe, and it had been about immunity but it hadn’t been for a private army it had been about scientific advances villains were so much more likely to make, and preventing future attacks—)

(They were going to out-bribe a bribed MP and James had his day planner but Silver had stolen it and wiped the drive—)

(What had happened between then and now to make Silver start following James around with hungry eyes? He had started out hacking them—)

(Hacking Thomas and James—)

(Thomas and _James._ )

Because they had been that—they had been living together and _been_ together and how could Thomas have forgotten. James likes doughy American pancakes and eliciting bad behavior in others and they’d been.

They’d been glorious.

“That _was_ really good sex.” It comes out without him meaning to but stops Flint—James—and Silver cold as they turn to stare at him, incredulous.

And he’s seen James make that face at so many things he’s said—and he can remember them now. When Thomas suggested a particularly dangerous plan, when Thomas suggested particularly cheap takeout, when Thomas had suggested that that since James was seeing Miranda and Thomas was seeing Miranda and James was seeing Thomas they might as well just all see each other in the same place.

(Miranda—)

(Oh. Miranda is now calling herself Mrs. Barlow, stole sensitive information from more than one elected official, and is now off in the Caimen islands seducing a preacher.)

(He would never have guessed that.)

(But it does sound like something she would do.)

“Thomas?” James says quietly, and it feels like Thomas is relearning his own name, hearing James say it—

And he hasn’t let them in on his current revelation.

He opens his mouth to say that his memories are back, to say that he loves James, to say anything resembling a romantic reunion, and what comes out is, “do _you_ have my clock?”

James’s face crumples and he’s stepping forward and his arms are around Thomas and Thomas digs his chin into James’s shoulder and he remembers. 

 

* * *

 

 

Silver’s text just says: _abort._

For fuck’s sake.

Billy peers through his binoculars to the rooftop Flint and Silver are on, a couple blocks away. They’re… he spins the dial, trying to get a better focus. There are three people up there now, and it looks like one of them is… strangling Flint?

That can’t be right. Silver is just standing there, letting it happen.  

That would only make sense if Silver had arranged for Flint’s murder. If that’s the case, Billy thinks it’s about damn time.

“What’s happening over there? Can you see?”

Billy swings outward with the binoculars, almost fast enough to take out Charles Vane. But the other man blocks and they grapple for a second, roof’s edge getting uncomfortably close. Then Vane has the binoculars and Billy is on his ass wondering what the fuck is happening.

If Silver is having _him_ murdered, he’s going to be really fucking pissed.

Vane peers through the nocs and Billy takes the opportunity to kick the other man closer to the five-story drop.

“Jesus fuck, calm down, will you? If I wanted to take you out I’d have done it twenty minutes ago.”

Billy stops kicking. “What?”

“I’ve had you in my sights for ages now. But Silver called off the mission, right? So it’s all good.” He puts the binoculars back up to his face. “Ugh, are they hugging?”

If Vane is here, does that mean that’s the Dark Lord Proprietor up there? “Give me those.” Billy thinks he’s going to have to fight, but Vane just hands them over. “Fuck’s going on?”

Vane shrugs like he’s warming up for a fight. “DLP asked for backup to prevent you from destroying the museum. I said yes for…” he glances around, like there’s someone else hiding behind the air vent, or something. “Personal reasons.”

He probably wants to borrow the ant army. There’s probably a waitlist.

Also, it kind of looks like Flint and the DLP are hugging.

“What the fuck,” Bill says under his breath. “Don’t they know I have to pay rent?”

“Probably not.” Vane snatches the nocs back. “These have great night vision. How much do they pay you?”

“The… binoculars aren’t mine.” But Vane is looking at him like he expects an answer, and Billy sighs. “Twenty percent after expenses.” When they don’t cancel the missions in the middle so they can hug it out with rival villains.

Vane grins. Vane’s grin is not something Billy could stand to see more of, frankly: he grabs the binoculars back to make himself feel a little more prepared for it.

(He also realizes he has four guns and some grenades on his person. He should probably have considered them before now.)

(But if Vane had wanted to kill him, he’d have done it twenty minutes ago.)

He checks on the other rooftop again, and—

“The hell…?”

“What?”

Billy lowers the nocs, blinks a few times, and then looks back. “I think they’re kissing.” Maybe he should have kept quiet, but someone else needs to understand the weirdness of this moment. He doesn’t want to be left in it alone.

“What the fuck?” Vane mutters. “They weren’t even on the list!” He shakes his head a few times. “Come work for me. I'll give you forty percent.”

Billy considers, and considers his future career as a henchman, and checks the binoculars.

They’re still kissing.  

“I'll work _with_ you,” is his counter offer. “Fifty-fifty.”   

Vane raises an eyebrow. “Ballsy, Bones. Gimee the nocs.”

Billy gives him the nocs, and Vane looks through the darkness to where, presumably, their mutual bosses/friends/partners/whatever are still lip-locked.

“Yeah,” Vane says. “We’ve got a deal.” He then appears to consider for a moment. “But we aren’t fucking.”

“Excuse me?”

“We were on the list. Number six.”

Billy thinks Vane is taking the list a little too seriously—although maybe that’s fair enough, considering who was quoted.

“Okay,” he says, and pulls out his phone to text Silver.

 

* * *

 

 

They’ve gone from kissing to forehead-touching. It’s revolting. Silver wants to watch it forever and he also wants to carve out his insides with a spoon.

Fortunately, Billy texts him, saving him from having to do either.

Oh.

He glances back at the happy couple. “Billy’s quitting us for Charles Vane,” he says.

At first it doesn’t seem like they’ve heard him, but Flint pulls away after a second. “What?”

“Billy.” Silver waves his phone, in case Thomas is such a good kisser that Flint has forgotten what a phone is. The light is probably burning out their night vision, but he doesn't care. “He just texted me his resignation because he’s going to go partner with Charles Vane.”

“Oh,” says Flint.

“I’d apologize,” Thomas says, “but I’ve never pretended to be responsible for Charles's behavior.”

Silver’s phone buzzes again.

“Also there’s two cop cars coming to investigate a robot ant sighting.”

Flint smirks. “My place?”

Thomas puts a hand on his chest. “Well I never.”

Silver says, “fuck you both,” sets the ants to escape mode, and starts running. 

They follow. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're accidentally at four chapters now and it's my own fault.


	4. Chapter 4

A superhero and two semi-reformed villains would have walked into a bar, but bars are full of listening ears. They would have walked into Eleanor’s rather swanky definitely-not-a-kept-woman digs, but that had recently been decimated by robot ants.

Max has the best booze anyway.

Eleanor has never had high-class drinking tastes, but she can appreciate nice stuff when it’s on a fashionably small kitchen table.

“So.” Max fills a shot glass and stoppers the bottle without even a drop rolling down the side. “It turns out that the underwear found hanging all over Whitehall belonged to one Woodes Rogers.”

“Yes.” Charles had posted a sign. And then Billy Bones had faxed the DNA evidence to several tabloids and Buzzfeed UK.  On an actual fax machine. Monsters. “I heard the same.”

“They say it’s because he was sleeping with Eleanor Guthrie the whole time,” Max continues. “Corrupted his decision making. Men, they are so easily led astray.”

“Well it’s alright,” Eleanor says. “Woodes has, of course, proposed marriage to save us both, to make an honest man and woman of us and to let the public know that whatever may have happened in our pasts, we are going forward together and our commitment is unshakeable. As is his respect for my counsel.”

“Sounds fake,” Madi says. “I’d have heard.”

“Well, he hasn’t reached that conclusion _yet,_ but give it time. After his divorce goes through.”

Max turns to Madi. “Can I assume we are toasting your new position as the leader of London’s superhero team?”

“Well now that you mention it.” Madi’s smile is dazzling. She raises a glass. “To the men Eleanor has by the balls.”

Eleanor drinks to that. “The Buzzfeed thing was your idea, you deserve credit.” She’d expected Charles to retaliate against Woodes—she _hadn’t_ anticipated that he would cause all her yogurt to spoil. That bit rankles. She hates food waste.  

“To teamwork, then.”

Charles is predictable only in his unpredictability, but he’s a man of action. He was always going to do something to expose Rogers—and to do it in a way that Eleanor could claim to be just as much a victim should anyone question _her_ motives. It’s tidy.

Eleanor doesn’t disdain Woodes as much as she lets her friends think, but she doesn’t love him as much as _his_ friends think. It’s a delicate balance. 

At the end of the day what matters most is what he can do, and his hands are increasingly tied. But he couldn’t blame her, if she has to let him go. After the trauma of such a public humiliation.

It’ll also give her the option of taking him back later, if she needs.

“Everyone has those robot ants, these days,” she can’t help lamenting. “Do you think they all have their own, or are they sharing one army?” Because Eleanor could do great things with an army of robot ants.

“Sharing,” Max says. “Captain Flint, Long John Silver and the Dark Lord Proprietor have teamed up. Also,” and she pauses to let them know she’s about to impart some great truth, “Flint and the Proprietor are together.”

Huh.

_Huh._

Eleanor narrows her eyes. “Where did you hear this?”

“Charles saw them kissing. He told Jack.”

Yeah, Jack has never kept a thing to himself in his life.

And maybe Eleanor and Flint had more in common than she thought.

(Not enough, though. She’d given him immunity, she had given him a way out, and he had gotten an army of robot ants.)

(She gets it. She gets him. She also misses him.)

(You know. A little bit. Not that much.)

Madi’s got her eyes on the ceiling like she’s putting something together, and Eleanor would pay good money to know what it is.

“So Flint and Silver have a new partner,” she says instead. “That’ll be… interesting.” Units like theirs don't tend to react well to change, but what does Eleanor know? The longest lasting partnership she’s had is Max, and they’ve betrayed each other, like, four times.

“I think they’re old partners, actually.” Madi says it like it’s the whole story when it clearly isn’t. “I don’t know when that was, though.” 

“The only partner he had before Silver was L.T.… huh.” Eleanor had never met L.T., but Flint had referenced him several times—they’d worked together until they accidentally gave a civilian serious brain damage. At that point L.T. had disappeared, and Eleanor had assumed that he’d freaked out. That he’d gone on to become a solo title is not something that had crossed her mind. “Where did you hear this?”

“Mm.” Madi distracts herself by studiously examining the nutrition facts on the back of a bottle. “Something Silver said.”

Max turns to Eleanor, eyebrows raised. She’s caught on to the fact that there’s more Madi knows, too. Max can slowly woo information out of anyone, but Eleanor doesn’t have that kind of time.

“So,” she says. “You're still in touch with  _Long_ John.” There’s a sharp pain in her arm and she’s about to lash out when she realizes that Max has pinched her. “Be careful you don’t pull a Woodes.”

Max pinches her again. “Let she who has not fucked a supervillain throw the first stone.”

“We _were_ supervillains, though,” Eleanor says. “It’s different.”

“Okay, one,” Madi says, “he wasn’t a supervillain then so it doesn’t count. Two, I’m really proud of you guys for using the past tense. Three, even if I was considering going there again, which I am not, he’s caught up in some weird love triangle with Flint and the DLP.”

And the plot thickens. Eleanor assesses her company.

“Are there any supervillains that _aren’t_ caught up in some love triangle or another?”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Madi looks as thoughtful as she can while pouring another shot. The woman has a liver of stone. “It could be a good thing. For us. Maybe they’ll all get too distracted buggering each other and forget to do crime.”

Eleanor tries not to grimace, but fails.

“What?”

Yeah she has no way to defend herself here. She takes a drink instead. She should possibly slow down, but that would be conceding defeat.

“Eleanor,” Max says, primly, “has placed Flint in the ‘dadzone.’” No one with her accent should be able to say the word _dadzone_. Nobody should ever be able to say it, at all, ever, but Eleanor did that time she got drunk with Max when she was convincing herself to work with Rogers.

She might have even invented it.

That is not the legacy she wants.

Madi, however, looks delighted. “You formed a trusting relationship with a man you weren’t fucking?”

Another shot is necessary. And is also a bad idea. She wouldn’t even be engaging with this conversation if she wasn’t on her way to getting drunk. “Okay, one,” she says, mimicking Madi, “I don’t even trust my actual father. Second, I didn’t say I think of him as _my_ dad, he’s just… dad-like. In a villainous sort of way.” Yeah, she’s kind of drunk. “But I didn’t trust him. He had motivations that were out of my hands.”

“Well, yeah,” Madi says. “So does everyone.”

“But some you can control. You can’t…” she tries to piece together the sentence, and it’s taking a second too long. “Men you can’t control are dangerous.” So is Madi, but Madi’s position is going to be in danger every day. “Some advice, as a friend. Don’t trust men you can’t control.”

“As _your_ friend, can I just tell you that that’s borderline pathological and kind of sad?”

 _As your friend._ Eleanor can’t really remember having friends before, and she thinks she likes it. It fits, right? Their goals currently align and they like each other, but nobody is fucking.

It’s nice.

She’s had a little too much to drink, though.

“She’s not wrong ,” Max says.

“I guess not.” Madi brightens. “But Rogers’s reformed villain army is now _my_ reformed villain army.”

Max tilts her head. “Weren’t you going to dismantle that part of the program?”

“What can I say? Power corrupts. I am your General now.”

“Well.” Eleanor considers. “I’ll drink to that.”

They clink glasses.

 

* * *

 

 

Silver had thought he knew how sharing Flint would work. Flint goes over to Hamilton’s very nice house in the very nice neighborhood with all the space, and stays at the lair when he needs to do something Hamilton’s very nice neighbors might disapprove of, or when he and Silver need to plan something. Silver’d seen the logical trajectory of that (Flint moves out) and made the appropriate contingency plans (make himself even more vital on missions, claim he can’t afford the flat on his own and move into Hamilton’s basement temporarily, make nice with the neighbors so that they can’t throw out the charming disabled man.) He’d even made more modifications to his leg in preparation.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the other way around—

Flint hasn’t left the flat.

Thomas is just… around.

He hasn’t moved into it, technically, but Thomas’s brand of coffee is in the cupboard and Thomas’s equipment is moving onto their workbenches and Thomas just _there._ Making plans and jokes and, sometimes, tea. Shirtless. In the kitchen.

Multiple times.

Silver has never bothered to avert his eyes. Flint keeps giving him these weird, searching looks, but if he _minded_ Silver checking out his husband’s abs, he would have made it clear. Angrily. 

But he hasn’t been angry.

Were Flint someone else, Silver might have even called him _happy._

Which is why Silver has Flint’s husband pinned to the wall with a knife at his throat.

“Listen to me very carefully,” he says. “Flint went through a lot to get you back. More importantly, _I_ went through a lot to get you back. So if you even think about…” _continuing to flirt with me, taunting me, like I don’t hear you two at night_ (and he wants to hear them just as much as he doesn’t) “philandering, and making Flint unhappy, I’m going to cut off your balls and hang them on the Eye. Are we clear?”

For someone with the corner of a whiteboard digging into the side of his head, and a blade at his throat, Thomas doesn’t look appropriately terrified.

Silver has made men pee himself with his very presence.

He’s slipping.

“Um,” Thomas says. “What?”

He presses the knife in a little harder. “You keep flirting with me.” He has examples. Evidence. Last Thursday when Thomas had winked at him. Last Friday when Thomas had offered him a neck rub. Last Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Every fucking day there’s something, and at this point, if Silver were to sleep with his best friend’s husband, a jury of his peers couldn’t possibly find fault with him. 

(Also his peers keep sleeping with each other’s partners, but that’s beside the fucking point right now.)

(The point is, Thomas needs to stop, before Silver ruins everything.)

“To be fair,” Thomas says. “You flirted with me first.”

Well, fuck. “That was so that I could find out if you were fucking Charles Vane.”

“Was it?”

Silver can’t press the knife harder without actually breaking skin, and he wants to get his point across without making it visible, because “You are not worth losing him over.”

It’s more honest than he meant to be.

Very calm, Thomas says, “your argument is flawed.”

“Are you _kidding_ me? You really want to debate someone with a knife to your throat?”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you aren’t holding a knife to my throat.” Like Thomas can create a new reality for _the sake of argument._ With most men that play this game it’s hard to tell what they actually believe and when they’re just advocating various checks on disability beneficiaries _to play devil’s advocate, don't get mad,_  but not Thomas. With Thomas, it’s hard not to know where he stands, even if he’s arguing the opposite side.

“Fine. For the sake of argument.” Silver makes no move to lower the knife. “My argument is flawed.”

“No, that’s not for the sake of argument. That part’s real. You think you’re in danger of losing him. You…” Thomas tilts his head a little. As much as he can with limited motion. He could probably have put up a fight by now, but instead he’s acting like a disappointed teacher. “You think you never had him in the first place, don't you. You’re thinking of yourself as an asset in a fight, in an operation, and trying to remain important so he doesn’t cast you aside. That’s sad, John.”

Silver is going to kill him.

“Excuse me?”

“Your abandonment issues. They’re sad.”

“ _You’re_ … sad.” Silver-tongued, yes he is.

“And you love him, and you want me, and it’s making you behave irrationally.”  

Silver draws blood.

Oops.

“Whatever I feel,” he says, trying to sound more dangerous than he thinks he is because how fucking dare Thomas speak to him like that. Say any of those things. “Is none of your business. Even if it were true. Which it... is not.”

“It’s… kind of is my business.”

“It doesn’t matter." Silver can't love anyone like Flint loves Thomas. What Flint feels for Thomas is sharp and unyielding, yes, but there’s a softness to them that Silver doesn’t think he could ever find within himself.

The drop of blood makes a slow track down Thomas’s neck, but Silver isn’t going to look at it.

“Did you know,” Thomas says, like this is a conversation, like they are having a fucking conversation or are two people that have those, like he hasn’t been peeling Silver’s masks back and playing with his insecurities like they’re legos or some shit, “how I met James?”

“No.” Every time Thomas says  _James,_ Silver gets a zit somewhere. 

“We met because we were both seeing the same woman. You may have met her by the name Mrs. Barlow.”

“No. But I know of her.”

“The three of us were together for a time, before Miranda went off to the Islands.” Thomas hasn’t even looked at the blood. Hasn’t acted like he’s felt it, but he must. Silver presses his thumb over the cut.

“Your point?” he asks.

Thomas raises an eyebrow.

Silver is either being invited to a threesome or a  _triad_ or he’s being set up to fall and he doesn’t know which is more terrifying. Either way—

“He doesn’t feel that way about me.” He’s not going to get weepy or sad over it. Especially not in front of Thomas. “So it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Your observations are flawed,” Thomas says.

A door creaks.

“What the hell,” Flint says. Silver checks to see if he’s also shirtless. He is. Jesus Christ. “Silver—”

“It’s fine,” Thomas says, like he’s not bleeding a little bit around Silver’s thumb. “We were just discussing your sex life.”

“Oh.” Silver doesn’t like the sound of that _oh._ He risks another peek to see that Flint has crossed his arms, trying to look as disapproving as he can with his arms and his tummy and his goddamn skin. “And was I going to be invited into this conversation?”

Thomas asks, “problem?”

Silver peeks again. Flint is looking him over like _he’s_ the one shirtless, and Silver now realizes he’s been missing something the last few weeks but fuck if he knows how.

“Not a one,” Flint says. 

“Well, good then.” Thomas catches Silver’s wrist, and Silver is just distracted enough that he lets him do it, that Thomas gets out from between him and the wall and walks off to the kitchen like there’s nothing wrong. The bleeding on his neck has stopped. It was never deep. “Who wants tea?”

“In a moment.” Jesus. It’s probably illegal in several countries, to look at someone the way Flint is looking at Silver.

Silver can’t breathe.

“Why,” he manages. “Why now.” (And this could still be a trap. He has to remind himself of that. Nothing is freely given.)

Thomas is probably still standing in the doorway, listening: Silver isn’t going to turn around to check. 

“You knew me,” Flint says slowly. “I was transparent to you, but I was not granted that same luxury. But now…”

Now what? Now Flint knows Silver wants him so he thinks he _knows_ him? He might. There’s no one else who comes close anymore, but the idea of being known so fully makes both of Silver’s feet itch. But he's not going to say anything. Not if it’ll ruin what he thinks may actually be going on here.

And Flint adds, “Stop.”

Silver waits.

“You don’t need to steal what is being offered to you.”

And what the fuck. Who gives him the right to say things like that.  What gives anyone the right to say that to someone. The air between them is heavy and loaded and Silver thinks if he takes a step forward—

He does.

He does and he and Flint collide. He does and he shoves Flint until he hits the whiteboard, smudging a half-finished plan, but Silver doesn’t give a shit because he’s got Flint under his hands and then their teeth clash and he’s kissing him—

(It’s not soft and Silver doesn’t know if it’s loving but—)

(This is real, he tells himself. This is real this is real this is real.)

And no one stabs him or shoves him away, his knife is on the floor a few steps back and his phantom toes curl. Flint’s hand is on his arse. And he could do this for hours, he’s got Flint’s lip in his teeth and Flint’s hips against his, in a slow grind that may kill them both. And then there's a mouth on the back of his neck and an extra hand in Flint’s hair and Thomas’s voice in his ear saying, “is this okay?”

Silver arches back into him.

(Says, _yes._ )

 

* * *

 

 

Silver lies on the couch, legs hanging off. No pants, no shirt. One sock. Thomas’s foot is somewhere around his knee, his hand is somewhere around Silver’s shoulder. Flint is sitting up the floor. One of Thomas’s legs is draped over his shoulder. There’s jizz in his beard.

For a few moments, there’s just the sound of staggered, uneven breathing.

“You know,” Flint says eventually. “We keep this up, you should probably start calling me James.”

“If only so the neighbors don’t think that Captain Flint is attacking,” Thomas adds, because he’s a dick.

Fuck that. If Flint’s going to use his tongue like that, Silver is going to make encouraging noises. That’s just how it works. Still—

“James,” he says, trying it out. Curls his tongue around it, sees how it fits. (It doesn’t.) “Yeah, not a chance.”

Flint seems to feel the same way. “Nope.”  

A few more moments pass. Silver would be happy to bask in an orgasmic haze, but Flint has never basked in anything in his entire life.

“We should see if we can take over the world,” he says.

Thomas pats him with his foot. “Kind of goes against your anti-imperialist stance.”

“Hmm.”  

“How about the British Isles?” Silver offers. The three of them, the robot ants, some internet viruses and maybe some help from Jack and Anne. No problem.

“And the continent.”

Silver looks at Thomas, who shrugs.

“Done.”

Still fully nude, Flint walks over to the whiteboard and picks up a marker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus: Bits I wanted to include, but couldn't, include: 
> 
> Eleanor: "I can't just change your place in the rankings. Mug an old lady or get the hell off my lawn."  
> Flint: "This is MY lair." 
> 
> \- 
> 
> Silver: Yeah, you want to fuck about it?  
> Silver: ...  
> Silver: Fight about it.  
> Flint: Yes. [Continues yelling] 
> 
> \--
> 
> As always, love and hate to lacecat for encouraging this. Love to all of you guys who read this weird little verse, and extra love to those who commented/are commenting. You guys are great and I love hearing from you. 
> 
> I didn't finish by then, but Monday marked six months since the finale/Thomas being alive/holy shit. *pops a belated bottle*


End file.
